The book describes a team of four women (a biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, and a surveyor) who set out into an area known as Area X.

The area is abandoned and cut off from the rest of civilization.1 They are the 12th expedition. The other expeditions have been fraught with disappearances, suicides, aggressive cancers, and mental trauma.

Annihilation was written and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, 28 Days Later).